"Who is but the form following the function of what, and what I am is a man in a mask." (Well I can see that.) "Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is." [-V, 2005]
So, she might be wrong or right. Who knows. That story wasn't convincing mainly due to how it was presented. I think this guy is onto something about that:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/03/10/satoshi-why...
So, now we have a new one with leaked emails and blog posts. The writer is wise enough, as Analemma noted, to mention it could be a hoax with some indications of that. It's actually the first thing I think given the two source are both huge red flags, one already has editing, and they center on a sort of egomaniac. An egomaniac who also has financial conflicts of interest and major investments in Bitcoin that might benefit from a false reveal. I'm not buying it until we have good external or first-hand data tying him to Bitcoin like prior work attempted.
The trust chain and leveraging Satoshi's stash without directly moving it is good thinking, though. I predicted that in private conversations as a significant possibility. Learned the trick from Wall St where they have all kinds of ways to make money on less money or static assets. Hell, they even make money on non-existent assets lol. A person sitting on a Bitcoin fortune able to prove it without it being published could do a lot of the same stuff.
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/bitcoin-fo...
Edit: Gizmodo mentions a bunch of tax issues http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-frie...
If he is Nakamoto, I wonder if he's using this computing power to test strategies for divesting of the "nine-figure fortune" of coins which is assumed to be controlled by Nakamoto.
If he wants to unload the coins, it's pretty simple: make a series of transactions that are time-locked to happen at particular intervals. Because other market participants know the coins won't be unloaded at once, but at regular intervals, there is no panic event. The selling pressure (and more importantly, the knowledge of the selling pressure) would affect the price, but not in a catastrophic event.
I also think people regularly underestimate the role of ideology in what happens to those coins. Not everyone is so motivated by a fortune that they'd risk their wonderful creation. The fact that they haven't moved yet is compelling evidence, though obviously precludes nothing.
Satoshi has a large position relative to the whole market. If he every wanted to convert those coins to US dollars or some other currency, I'm guessing the supply it would introduce would cause the conversion rate to crash unless done in a sophisticated way.
I had to explain to my wife why I was laughing so hard.
I'm all for real Bitcoin news, even about whats-his-face in Japan or interviews with old cypherpunks. Or new forks or new coins or ponzi schemes or silly lost hard drives even.
But this article is unfounded clickbait nonsense. Whomever the real SN is has done good security work on their identity and won't be found unless they want to.
Even a single satoshi leaving one of his known wallets could spook enough people to cause a crash. I can't speak for other investors, but even though I have been long in bitcoin for years, I would be out in a heartbeat, for at least a month.
I don't understand why Satoshi's stash of bitcoins is any easier to spend untraceably than any other store of value.
That's the risk. Not sure of its likelihood in terms of a percentage or even verbal description. It's near zero while he's anonymous, though.
Like bitcoin itself, the anonymity of bitcoin is also a chain. Bitcoins can be mined anonymously, and therefore transacted anonymously. But any point where they are converted to other stores of value will create connections to real-world identity. For example, cash has to be picked up in a physical place, or it has to be transfered into a bank account, which creates an auditable transaction record. Purchased objects have to be delivered somewhere. Purchased services are interacted with in some way. Etc.
Overall point of the discussion is that people finding out he has a physical/digital object worth millions might try to rob him. Some of them also use Bitcoin as payment for crime. So, anonymity seems like a good choice.
Having said that, I looked over the article and this seems to be the most convincing Satoshi Nakamoto theory thus far. There's no need to jump to any firm conclusions yet though: I'm certain the Internet will conclusively prove or disprove this over the next few days.
Satoshi's grammar is always perfect. His sentences are tight. He's clear and to the point. Wright rambles; his grammar is terrible; he seems to have no idea what a comma is for. Scanning his blog for a minute, he comes across as the kind of slightly dotty kook who would try to convince people he's Satoshi with this kind of "leak."
I'll stick with the current mainstream theory, thanks...
In the business world I see writing style changing depending on who one is talking to - a trait I don't generally see in engineers. Who knows the mind of the originator of bitcoin.
Also, Wright can have a few drinks and click to send a sloppy message without much thought. However any time he purportedly posts as Satoshi he probably re-reads it 100 times with his heart pumping at 150bpm and takes as much care over his writing as the potentially fictional Satoshi. The author of bitcoin would surely be clever enough even if his natural language skills were poor.
Edit: well worth mentioning, on this note, that he asks for his associates to edit his public messages, seemingly aware of his terrible writing. Or a knowing attempt to obfuscate these matters. Or alternatively, yknow, not this guy.
That said, the rest of the evidence is pretty compelling, isn't it?
Satoshi did once say he wasn't all that good with words, despite evidence to the contrary. Perhaps this mysterious collaboration with his dead friend involved the other guy writing the messages.
That makes me think it's more than one person, e.g. Wright, Kleiman, Szabo and possibly more. The more people that edit a work, the less errors there will be.
I'd buy the leaks if the hacker posted a message as Satoshi using stolen credential and linked to this article. Meanwhile, the "hacker" is probably Wright with nothing to do with Satoshi other than make money on his name.
Awesome guerrilla marketing.
Journalists want the scoop of the century - outing the real Satoshi. By back filling history, they gave exactly what they wanted, and they took it hook, line and sinker.
[1] https://www.ato.gov.au/General/Gen/Tax-treatment-of-crypto-c...
http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-frie...
if it's a hoax, seems like an awfully long and meticulous one.
[edit - Dang this fell off front page fast! Thought this one was going to be almost Steve Jobs in terms of having a life of its own]
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3vzgnd/bitcoins_cr...
> Nothing completed (due to work on a secret project)
Why is this not at the beginning of the article? That's pretty strong evidence that this is a hoax.
The email/tweet/transcript quotes almost suggest sort of multiple personality disorder where he believes he's Satoshi.
While it seems plausible that he would obfuscate his styleometry, it would be interesting to do a comparison with early Bitcoin.
The early Bitcoin code is super awkward.
I've been looking, and so far the only thing I've found is this: https://digital-forensics.sans.org/blog/2009/04/24/code-skil...
They may have deleted that key.
Then again, Satoshi might own a lot of btc that isn't wrapped up in the genesis blocks and he could have plenty of money to wait until bitcoin either dies or matures to the point where he doesn't have to expose himself as much by moving them.
And really, he's created one of the few things in Computer Science that I wouldn't argue with being patented. A blockchain is a configuration of algorithms into a novel abstract "machine", with many possible implementations, which isn't domain-specific, and that nobody had thought of—or, really, was likely to ever think of—without him.
Really, I'm just hoping that he's still actively working on other ideas; I would love to follow his research.
We know that more than one figure in history cheated on their spouses, were violent towards their children, etc. Yet, people still admire other human beings, and not necessarily their particular achievements. Mind you, I am not saying that this behaviour is wrong, or bad, it is just very interesting.
Ultimately, I will probably remain puzzled by the way other people around me behave, but I guess that within certain limits, it doesn't harm anybody. Many people will continue to try to find out his or her identity.
In sum:
* Only one key, the Original Key, is actually known to be associated with Satoshi.
* The Wired and Gizmodo Keys that supposedly lead back to Satoshi weren’t previously known to be linked to Satoshi, and their 2008 creation date could have been faked.
* Both keys use a longer and less-common key size than the Original Key.
* Both keys use a list of cipher-suites that don’t match up to the Original Key, and weren’t added to GPG until 2009.
* The Wired key was retroactively added to a 2008 blogpost sometime between 2012 and 2014, as noted in its story.
* A core Bitcoin developer who’s been involved from nearly the beginning looked back at 2011 chatlogs referring to “fake” Satoshi keys on keyservers, and found no reference to either the Gizmodo or Wired keys. He thinks that those keys weren’t yet uploaded to the keyserver in 2011.
[1] http://motherboard.vice.com/read/satoshis-pgp-keys-are-proba...
"I've got a couple doctorates... I forget what I've actually got these days".
It's hard to take seriously someone who is trying this hard not to appear self-aware.
Having probably the only concentration of wealth over $100M not guarded by a full security detail, it could very well lead to not only his own harm, but perhaps his family members being kidnapped, etc.
That is not even to mention the bilderberg/rothschild/etc. type of people that probably aren't big fans.
And they are the elites that make money on the system's corruption and schemes, some even attending Bilderberg. Why would they worry about elite get-togethers as a threat to their life if they're playing ball in a way that makes them money and power? Unlikely.
PS: Getting kidnapped for ransom is not so uncommon in third world countries.
I've seen people want to mysteriously associate themselves with something large before. This could be an example of it.
i doubt this is speculation as the actions definitely show he is trying to hide something (his original writing from analysis). this is also apparent in his replies to wired.
also, it sucks that this kind of content is being cleared. i found it interesting and hope it will make it back. please put it back craig.
edits:
the following quote is quite odd; anyone have any clarity?
“About 20 years ago, I was at the launch of Alta Vista. It was the first big commercial search engine. Back in the early '90s… everyone told me how much of a ‘coo-coo’ [crazy] I was for wasting all this money to be part of something that’s a ‘bloody piece of computer code’," said Wright. [1]
That said, the issue with outing him is that he could hold more sway over the direction of BTC than if it were a truly decentralized currency. Not sure this if that's in the best interests of BTC.
Bitcoin is not a system for those that favor changing the rules once the game is in play.
http://gizmodo.com/this-australian-says-he-and-his-dead-frie...
While so much seems 'too good to be true' and potentially a plant, it is quite incredible that someone would put this all together after the fact to make a perfect fitting story. Either some ends won't meet, or we'll have the answer at long last.
But, it's quite credulous to say "Oh, what an unusual and determined person it must to be to think of claiming to be Satoshi in 2013."
So what does this mean for bitcoin, anything?
The Bitcoin market has mostly been assuming that Satoshi's bitcoins are lost forever, and the price reflects that. If it turns out Wright can still sell those Bitcoins it would have a dramatic- but probably not cataclysmic- effect on the price.
The other question would be if he wanted to involve himself in Bitcoin development. If he really is Satoshi, his voice would carry a lot of weight on big, divisive issues like block size. For better or worse.
Proving your point!
Do we have any evidence of what kind of person Kleiman was?
Yep. That seems plausible. Given means, motive, and opportunity (including a few months of time), could some of the folks here on HN have backfilled history this way? Register an email address one character off of Satoshi's? Edit some old blog posts to insert Bitcoin references? Generate backdated GPG keys? Perhaps enough to satisfy not-very-technical journalists who won't think to compare coding styles and are too worried about losing a scoop to ask folks for second and third opinions?
I'd expect the real Satoshi to have more of a math background, not "ecommerce law" and "digital forensics." I'd also expect him to be more similar in writing style and be more ideologically in sync with Bitcoin in his public actions. Plus I'm not a C# coder but this looks pretty basic: https://digital-forensics.sans.org/blog/2009/04/24/code-skil...
The evidence the journalists published is more convincing if you want it to be convincing. My guess is that they did.
Also in the Gawker article we are told Wright emailed Kleiman asking for "help editing a paper", "I need your help and I need a version of me to make this work that is better than me."
Perhaps Kleiman was the one who really wanted to keep Satoshi's identity a secret, but Wright had different ambitions and now he doesn't have his friend to rein him in anymore.
Your comparison indicates they're highly unlikely to be the same person. Come to think of it, Wrights words are one of the only things we can attribute to him and evaluate in this. The rest can be made up crap and probably is.
'Craig Wright of Australia wrote, a bit petulantly, “Always the assumption that [Satoshi Nakamoto] must be a bloody yank. The analysis of who Satoshi is is always so limited.”'
from this article: http://fusion.net/story/243056/alleged-bitcoin-creator-craig...
Is Kashmir unable to read? Wright never said that. He was clearly angry about the national stereotyping and the 'assumption' and how thinking is 'limited'. This is exactly like those cases where women authors publish books under names like 'J.K. Rowling' and readers assume they are men; of course they are going to be upset.
One time I told that story to a Marine who instantly went PTSD. First time I met someone with similarly messed up HD loss. He had his slim, external laying on a table in maybe Iraq. Another Marine, round in the chamber, casually dropped his M16 on the table as he came in. It fired a burst right into the HD, leaving it unrecoverable. I said, "Damn. I'm at a loss for words." So, you ain't the only one haha.
